Rating: 
Summary: A Shanghai Teenager's though...
Review: When I was strolling in a book store in Singapore, Falling Leaves intrigued me from time to time. Due to my curiousity, I opened this book and read a few lines. It was about Shanghai, the city where I was born. It was amazing to see what was happening in Shanghai sixty years ago. The description of various familiar places in old Shanghai is very vivid. After reading this book, I had a better understanding of my hometown and the reality in the 1920s and 1930s.I give it a rate of 4 stars. At least it was a book which I could not put down. The book has drawn my sympathy towards the author. The ending, being a strange one, somehow surprises me. Sorry am I to know that how the author's siblings treated her. The author has very well manipulated my feelings and after reading so, I started to abhor those so called Two Sides People. (They smile to you, but do harm to you behind your back.) I even intended to visit her Aunt Baba, but sorry was I to find that she had passed away. Maybe it is because of the fact that I am a Shanghaiese, I feel that stories like this do similarly happen in Shanghai even nowdays. Of course, the chance is rare. The wonderful insertion of Chinese proverbs and famous phrases is a big success. Western Culture can very well mix with Easter one! The only thing I do not like this book is that there are parts that are yet not clear enough. Anyway, it is still a book worth reading. Maybe you will want to visit Shanghai after your reading it! Welcome! Best wishes Eric Lewis
Rating:
Summary: Engrossing and touching
Review: This book is well worth reading, as it is both engrossing and suspenseful. The people described in it were so mean and spiteful to the author when she was young, I had to keep reading to find out whether the situation would change when she became an adult. I felt it was understandable that the author kept trying, despite repeated rebuffs, to win the approval of her family. Children who are denied unconditional love become damaged adults who continually seek the approval they were earlier denied. Therefore, I was not annoyed with the author for her seeming naivete in continually trying to please her impossible family. Rather, she seemed very human and vulnerable, and I found her tale heartbreaking. Despite the painful theme, the book is not depressing, as the author does have some triumphs. I recommend it as an enjoyable read.
Rating: 
Summary: Power
Review: Falling Leaves is such a powerful book about the authors harrowing tale of her childhood. This book made want to cry at the injustice she suffered at the hands of her evil stepmother, weak father and the betrayal of her own siblings. But she showed her mettle by surviving countless acts of malice towards from a young age of 5 to even her adult life. When her stepmother died and gave her last blow to Adeline, I felt her pain and anguish. Despite the last insult with the divving of the family's fortune, Adeline came out on top. She came out with her dignity in hand and did not grovel like her sister, Lydia. EXCELLENT and very MOVING book.
Rating:
Summary: sad but great !
Review: Falling leaves, is a complex and winding story with twists and turns that take the reader on a journey of the human soul and the will to survive in the most trying situations. It is indeed a true tear jerker with a well formed plot. Falling Leaves captures the true essence of what a novel should be --- a page turner.
Rating: 
Summary: Too good to be true
Review: Set against the backdrop of the turbulent Chinese political landscape, Adeline Mah describes herself as an "unwanted daughter" growing up determined to succeed in life despite the abuses she endures at the hands of her wicked stepmother and immediate family. In Falling Leaves the author makes herself out a heroine who is innately virtuous and forgiving not unlike Fanny Price of Jane Austin's Mansfield Park. However unlike the tradition of the classic novel where the reader gets the feeling a character has grown in wisdom through trial and tribulation, Mah remains her own emotional prisoner. Her virtuous ways in relation to siblings and parents defy human reason in light of the constant abuse she endures. In Falling Leaves the "would be" heroine comes across in the end as more pathetic than tragic or sympathetic because her need for familial acceptance overshadow her need to maintain personal integrity. For me, Falling Leaves started out interestingly enough because I am relatively unfamiliar with twentieth century life and politics in China. However I would have been more satisfied with the book if I came away feeling that Mah was a better person despite the abuses she endured. In weaving Chinese proverbs throughout the chapter text, the author is able to underscore the role of fate while minimizing her complicity, her own responsibility for the way her life unfolded. Mah's ability to achieve material success as she matures through what she describes as sheer will and intellectual acumen would seemingly free her from her families' emotional stranglehold. Being able to buy a Mercedes, travel the world over, live the good life in Southern California, markers of material success are not enough for Mah who seems to suffer from "poor little rich girl" syndrome. By the end of the book, I found it difficult to sympathize with a character so obsessed by what she perceives to be her just reward - proof that her parents love her because they give a wealthy woman money. The hostility and impatience she evokes in the reader stems from Mah's inability to be self-reflective - her refusal to come clean in the end. Falling Leaves reminded me that memory is selective and the line between fiction and non-fiction is slim.
Rating:
Summary: A SAD STORY!
Review: It is hard to believe that Adeline has met so many cold-blooded siblings around her life, in spite of her willingness to help the whole family members and to become assimilated with her siblings. Consequently, almost every one in her family was against her decisions, and at the end of the book, Adeline was surprised to find out that Lydia, who was received generous helps from Adline, wrote many letters to tell Niang that how dangerous Adeline was to the family. It was a heartbreaking story that will be hard to forget for a very very long time. In conclusion, this book tells us that even your best friends will somehow betray you, and Adeline was the one who endured and experienced this kind of excruciation.
Rating:
Summary: Essence of Giving without Asking for Return
Review: It is a very touching story in gengeral, althought it is very subjective and self centered. I believed in everything described by author and felt sorry for her. She was lucky to be born in a wealthy family to receive advance education but sadly either she nor anybody in her family received basic human right after her father married Niang. I understand why Mah needed to search and gain her parent's love but I do not understand why she did not develop any confidence in herself. I also wondered it may be her self-believed rightousness enlarged the distance between family members. As a caring, independent and well estabilshed profession, Mah did not understand the essence of giving without asking for return. And that was the reason why she kept feeling hurt. It was very common in China to ask children obeying and pleasing their parents, but it is very rare of children been reluctant and expecting love from their parents at the same time. Compare to Mah's sibling, they had similar mistreatment in childhood but they remain less hussel reationship between each other. I admire Mah's hard working and persistent to achieve her career peak and find her happy life outside the Yen's family and I am sure Yen's sibling will reunion once she could let it go. I also found interesting message regarding Chinese Women's right in the book. For example, Great Aunt and Aunt Baba were nerve married for receiving good education and meeting the family's need of managing the house. Niang gained power by pleasing her husband initially. The book is recommended for it's beautifully written and truly reflecting Chinese cultures and customs.
Rating:
Summary: Falling Leaves
Review: The book truly gives reader the background of how people lived back in the old Shanghai days. Even now, people back in Shanghai still admire the west. They even look down on their fellow chinese and still think people from the west are from highest class. It's still a pity that nothing had changed their values. Adaleine to me has her own selfish ways that even she succeeded with her career, what she so called "successful marriage", it's her childhood that I pitied but the hatred and her unforgiveness still inside her heart even to her sibling truly not worth young readers to regard her as model.
Rating:
Summary: very touching althoug can be more forgiving
Review: I read this book in Chinese version. And I found it very fascinating about the life that Mrs. Mah been through. I feel aorry about the way she got treated when she was a child. I believe this is good opportunity for her to say something that she dare not to say when her parents were still alive. However, I am suspicious in the end when she portaryed how her sibling reveal the inheritance from her stepmon. I feel like she was using this book to let everybody knows that her sibiling are not fair to her. And she cared about the inheritance a lot, too. No matter what the circumstances are, I hope Mah let bygones to be bygones. I can relate some of her experiences on the people that closed to me. However, I always thought that in the end of the book, the author will find something that is bright and good for her. The bitterness in the end of this book makes me pondering. I hope Mah can find her forgivness toward her family and be thankful of whatever she ever had. Because everybody has a different situation and some people even have worse situation that you can not imagine. I am from a middle-class family and I have to earn to study and to come to the United States. I hope the author can write another book regarding that she has a better life now and forego the past. On the history side, this book has very good descriptions. It is the pain to all of the Chinese that we have to go through the evolution of the history. May the author live peacefully in America now.
Rating:
Summary: Beautifully Written: both painful and inspirational
Review: This powerful book is an unforgettable read. I do not agree with reviewers who describe this author as resentful--rather I find this a beautiful affirmation of choosing to let go of bitterness. The characters are vivid, the story is compelling and the prose is beautiful. There is so much history contained in this book--I found it fascinating!
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